Abstract
Counterfactual analysis has been recommended as a means of assessing the impacts of European Rural Development Programmes (RDP) over recent years, although its application has been scarce to date. This paper examines the use of counterfactual analysis to assess socioeconomic impacts in a set of 2007–2013 ex-post evaluations. The analysis undertaken shows that a wide variety of counterfactual approaches have been applied, although certain barriers still remain to address the estimation of RDP impacts following the EU evaluation standards. Furthermore, we noted that impacts provided by individual RDP evaluations may hardly be aggregated, making it difficult to draw clear conclusions about the effectiveness of rural development policy at the EU level.
Highlights
Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) have represented the main instrument of the second pillar of the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since their introduction as part of the Agenda 2000 reform
The results reported in the socioeconomic programme-related common evaluation questions (CEQs) (Appendix A) show the different information provided by evaluation reports about the performance of individual RDPs
This paper explores the use of counterfactual analysis to estimate RDP socioeconomic impacts in seven 2007–2013 RDP ex-post evaluations
Summary
Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) have represented the main instrument of the second pillar of the European Union’s (EU) Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since their introduction as part of the Agenda 2000 reform. These multi-annual programmes, defined at national or regional level by member states (MS), cover programming periods of seven years. RDPs are subject to ex-post evaluations to assess their success and impacts with respect to defined objectives. The evaluation procedures of EU programmes have increasingly gained relevance within the European Commission’s (EC) activities over recent years [1,2,3]. The recent EU Better Regulation Agenda [4] highlights the role of these evaluations in the EU policy cycle as they “ . . . aim to inform policymaking by assessing existing interventions regularly and ensuring that relevant evidence is available to support the preparation of new initiatives”
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